


Worthy of Verse

by gritkitty



Category: Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003)
Genre: Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-20
Updated: 2008-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-25 07:49:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1639829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gritkitty/pseuds/gritkitty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>With the Surprise's happy roar of congratulations ringing over the water still, Tom spared no glance behind him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Worthy of Verse

**Author's Note:**

> My betas are the best editors; excellent writers; and all around awesome people.
> 
> Written for a caramel macchiato

 

 

With the Surprise's happy roar of congratulations ringing over the water still, Tom spared no glance behind him. The longboat bobbed its way to the Acheron on an ocean that was as eager to bring Tom to his command as Tom was eager to reach it. The Acheron was fit to make sail, though she looked a sorry mess dressed in hastily spliced lines and sails rent with cannon holes both neat and ragged. His critical eye spied wreckage littering the decks still, shoved out of the way in heaps; he could see the tail end of a snake of flotsam carried away from the ship, just visible, some of it gruesome. To sail and fire the great guns were the beginning and end of a ship. All else came second. 

Up the side he came lightly, the honor paid him reedy and drab for lack of hands: a sad contrast to the ringing cheer that had cheered his promotion and departure, but it was delivered by three of the prize crew, stout lads and familiar as the back of his hand, nowhere near capable to match the entire Surprise, led by William Mowett's cheerful voice. 

The rest of the prize crew -- whalers and marines -- were too busy making ready or guarding the prisoners to pay him any mind, and Tom preferred it so, given the circumstances; he respected results over show, and before the informal salute ended he sent the men scrambling. The Acheron would depart in a seamanlike fashion, with grace and confidence, by God. He would have it no other way in his ship, and the Acheron was indeed his ship until he reached port, no matter what happened to her after. 

And what might happen after they reached port stewed in the back of his mind. A ship, a command; cast ashore with half-pay most likely. Or back to the Surprise, that happiest of ships on the sea and the home of his best shipmates, of his best memories. On the quarterdeck, alone, the losses aboard the Surprise struck Tom anew, as a shock and not days old. Sadness clawed the back of his throat, and he turned his face into wind. 

"Beg pardon, sir," said Fry, knuckling his eye, "but the Frenchie doctor is asking for water brought down to ease the wounded." 

Tom's anger rose. He had no sympathy for the prisoners nursing their pride and their wounded, not with Calamy's dead stare fresh in his mind. "Damn his coddling; they can wait; we have better things to do than --" Tom stopped himself, and his own pride returned to him. He would not lower himself -- had surprised himself with such vicious thoughts -- and drew his hand over his face. "No, fetch them water and biscuit. That should keep them quiet." 

"The queer thing is they are quiet, Captain, but for that doctor asking after the crew." 

Feeling shamed for his uncharitable thoughts before Tom said, "See to their water." Still, what was right and just did not excuse coddling on his part, either, and he added, "Send down a likely few to the pumps and keep a sharp eye on them." 

The breeze favored them throughout the day, satisfying Tom as they flew along, steady, throwing a creamy wake. When at last he judged he had time for it, the French cook was convinced to prepare a criminally late dinner, which Tom took in the captain's quarters. He left, surly and muttering imprecations, and the door closed, and Tom was alone: more alone than on the quarterdeck. No drunken mids, no wardroom chatter or song, and worst of all, no poetry from Will, swaying and ruddy but eloquent, a companion entirely compatible and now conspicuous by his absence. 

With no need to prolong the meal -- silent, sober, and the cook had managed to find the toughest hank of gristle to feed him, a vile knot better suited indeed to secure a jib to its stay -- Tom returned to the deck and received report of all's well; seven knots; wind steady; prisoners quiet, "Except for that doctor," said Burden, Fry's tie-mate, as short and round as Fry was tall and thin. "He says hands at the pumps should be changed out, that we forced wounded down there, and it'd be murder to leave 'em." 

"They pump no more or less than any aboard the Surprise, and those down there now," Tom said, "have not yet served a full shift." 

"Also the lookout says the Surprise has been growing on our horizon." 

Tom went up himself to see, and there she was, in the late afternoon light, more than the nick between the two planes of sky and sea that she should be. On deck again, Burden asked, "Should we turn around?" 

"Those are not my orders, and I shan't change them in the absence of need." He paused, and then directed him to cut their speed, adding, "I see no need to race ahead, Keep watch and report directly any kind of signal." Privately he thought, "If the Surprise wants a word, they will throw up a light or catch us quick enough." 

Fry approached as Burden went to his task and made his obedience. "Sir, the doctor's at it again, demanding this and that. Says he wants to examine the prisoners direct like." 

"He has seen them, having demanded to witness the delivery of water. Perhaps he is not busy enough in the orlop, it seems." 

"Seems so, sir," Fry said sourly, "seeings how he's got time to complain how the Frenchies ain't been treated fair by us English pigs." 

"Damn him for a --" Tom strode to the hatch. "I meet my obligations, and by God I will not take slander from a surgeon. Come with me." Fry followed, and they collected Higgins in their wake.

In the orlop, fusty with the expected close atmosphere found below decks but different in its stench, the doctor stood bent over a patient on the table. Without moving from his pose or even looking around, he said, "My men are being used badly, taken from their sickbeds to labor for you. You must return them to me. Take able bodied men, not the injured." 

Tom nodded to Fry and Higgins. They grabbed the doctor's arms and forced him upright to face their captain, who said in his coldest, hardest voice, "Doctor de Vigny, is it not? Leave off your carping and demands or you will join your friends in the hold, and it will be your behavior that leaves these men without care." 

"It will be your lack of honor," he retorted, his dark eyes gleaming. 

Tom's hands clenched. He surveyed the dozen men slumped on the floor in bloodied bandages or dangling unmoving in hammocks. None looked too dire. "You," he said to the loblolly boy, "are any of these patients ready to die?" Uncomprehending or fixed with terror, the man shook his head. "No matter; Higgins can take over here." Tom fixed the doctor in his sight and said, "Enjoy your friends in the hold, Monsieur." He ordered him away, leaving the assistant alone with the wounded. 

On deck, the stench from below decks blowing away in the breeze, Tom wished Will stood at his side. He would turn a phrase or make a quip to lighten the mood: always the right sentiment. Though they had parted only that morning, Tom missed his whispered words tried and rejected until they lined up into perfect verses. He liked the running flow of images Will would taste, showing a skill Tom admired and could never partake himself. _The sky's fire . . . the ocean skips us along . . . the sun glows as . . ._ he whispered, and then shook his head, dismayed and amused with himself, to think he could be so presumptuous as to dream up verses worthy to leave his head. 

"Surprise is coming up on our tail, and she's throwing out her signal; she wants a response," said Fry. 

"Ready a -- " Tom began but was interrupted by thunder that shuddered the deck and the cries of surprise and feet slapping the deck as black smoke billowed out the hatch. His men above rallied down -- if the powder room had been compromised, they should dive into the ocean and perish regardless -- but if it was a fire, they might yet live if they could quell it, but before they could go below with buckets, the prisoners boiled out faster than the smoke, coughing and crying through the soot on their faces but several of them armed with swords and knives and stout splinters wielded like cudgels. 

The doctor stood tall amid them, a pistol in one hand and sword in the other; his stance unlike any doctor Tom had known, but he did not slow his response as he leap forward to engage the fight. _Capitaine_ , the prisoners cried, and Tom's confusion instantly cleared, bringing with it clarity and Tom's pistol leveling at the French captain's head. Fire, the blow of sound in his ears and the shock of it up his arm, but through the smoke he saw the man next to the captain claw his face and fall. Tom drew his sword instead, taking full advantage of his height and slashing in long deadly arcs left and right to clear a path, charging ahead until he brought his sword down in a powerful, deadly blow: again the wrong man, skull cleaved, and the French captain shuffled back, his crew drawing around him. 

Tom's coat caught, snagged and pulling him back to the right, cut a burning score upon his ribs as two Frenchmen leapt upon him from the left, unarmed but swinging their fists, pushing him back with their weight until he was pinned against the starboard rail. A flash out of the deepening gloom, and a shot carried with it the boom of Surprise's great gun, splintering the rail just behind the bowsprit.

Her sails glowed, reflecting the sunset, as she bore up and turned, giving the Acheron another shot across the bow, missing the ship but cutting through the rigging. Tom had never seen her like this, roused and deadly, her gunports inhuman dark eyes stabbing flames to maim, to kill. The impression was a fleeting moment that slowed, and slowed again, so that Tom could see the curl of water around her and the men in her tops moving quickly he knew, but they looked slow, slow. He cheered her in his mind even as an alien fear clutched him, weird empathy for the French and all who had faced her in battle. 

A shout in his ear broke the moment's grip on him. His men -- seven members of the prize crew and no more, the marines yet missing, perhaps murdered in the initial escape -- trying to rally around him and doing well, seven against a horde, and surely more French to come, only delayed between decks. Tom howled, "Have at 'em!" and tore himself from the rail, through the press of prisoners, lunging again at their captain, and this time joined by prize crew who flanked him, putting him at the point of an arrow aimed at the enemy. 

French sailors fell away, the mass of them backing, backing, as the roar of another shot trailed the great thump of its impact, but the fight intensified when Surprise stopped firing. The Acheron was drifting, unmanned, as the mob grappled. There was no room for doubt or remorse in Tom's heart: only the turning of the blade in his hand, the dance back or forward, the shoving and scrambling. _My ship:_ it was his only thought, and he clung to it like he clung to his unlikely advantage amid a crowd of enemy prisoners, only five people at his back now but good men; the best men: Morga clearing the starboard rail, Rondell shielding Tom's right side, the others ducking and slicing like mad things. Burden had held back his pistol, and just as the biggest brute next to the French captain swung his sword at Tom's unguarded head, he leveled it and fired, and Tom's ear went hot and dull, deafened by the noise and possibly shot off for all he could tell. 

Deafness did not affect his limbs, and he dove into the hole left by the man, who had collapsed, bubbling, to the deck. Up he bounded, chest to chest with the French captain, close enough to smell his breath and taste the old blood and sweat. The fixing stare of battle between them heated with challenge, and it was the French captain who wavered, a slip almost too scant to detect, and Tom moved without hesitation and grappled him right there, ignoring the vulnerable position, and locked the man's head with one arm, held his sword biting into the man's neck. 

" _Capitulez_!" Tom shouted. "Surrender or die!" 

The man struggled in his arms, and Tom's sword bit harder. A scrim of blood slicked his neck, but Tom hung on doggedly. He choked, gasping on his words, and his men hesitated, unsure. The Surprises pushed the sudden advantage, savaging their way through their ranks even to the top of the hatch, where more prisoners spewed out as if impelled on the smoke. 

The French captain cried out his surrender as a tide of Surprises flowed over the starboard rail, brought over by the longboats and led by William Mowett. "Here's a pretty picture," said Will, once the fighting ended, and that quickly: the prisoners were beaten and they knew it. Tom held the French captain still, wisely not trusting him; he would likely slip a knife between Tom's ribs as not, were his hands free. "You look a fierce sight, bloodied and defiant and fighting to the end. Perhaps you can let him go, now, Tom," and Will gestured Bonden forward who, with a couple of stout lads, escorted the captain by pistol point below. 

Tom leaned his bloody hands on the rail. Fatigue struck suddenly, the growing awareness of pain in his side, bruises rising all over. "Thank you." 

"We only threw a few shot across the bow, little more. You and your lot did all the hard work, and we saw the end of the melee. Prodigious fighting, that." 

Tom turned to him, light words on his lips, but no smile. "Maybe worth a poem, do you think?" 

A frown blurred his usual genial expression. "Or two, at least. Are you hurt?" Will looked him up and down. 

"I can't say; it is all too raw, but I am standing, so it can't be too bad." 

"'Pon my word, that is a wave of blood," Will disagreed. "I should be getting you to the doctor." 

"No! No," said Tom. "This is my command. Send the doctor over here, if he pleases. I shall remain with my ship." 

*

Captain Aubrey's invitation could not be refused, and Tom had no reason to decline, given that his ship was locked up tight and covered with guards from the Surprise. The French captain was shut in a lieutenant's cabin and given hardly enough room to breathe. Damn honor, Tom thought, and his sentiment was echoed by Jack Aubrey when he had said, _The man's a wily scrub. Just be sure to feed him once in a while; he's worth more alive._. It would be a fine dinner, Tom was sure, and he wondered at his own reluctance. The melancholy after a battle, he thought, a self diagnosis not far from the mark and one cured by a stout will and also food. He hoped the wine would come round quickly: his wounds still throbbed. 

Killick brought the first round of Madeira, and Tom was glad when the Captain stood and congratulated his victory, holding out his glass, and they all drank down the first of many such glasses, some raised in genuine happiness; some taken with sad smiles: all the chairs were full, but with faces less familiar than those they had known. 

"Here is a silver lining to a dastardly deed," said Hogg, still puffed with his promotion to sailing master. "We would not have dined so had we sailed on." 

"A pleasure indeed to share another meal with dear shipmates," replied Jack, avoiding Hogg's gaze entirely, looking instead to Tom. "Despite the unfortunate turn of events that brought about the opportunity. A glass of wine with you," he offered, and Hogg mumbled into his cup as Tom drained his. 

"You have to admire him for his ability to deceive," said Stephen of the French captain. 

Jack frowned. "Admire? Hardly." 

"A skill misused -- should it be despised?" 

"That we deceive the enemy with false colors to lure them in is one thing, but to continue the farce long after the enemy is engaged," Jack shook his head, "is a matter of dishonor. A true warrior fights under his own banner." 

"There was no doubt of the man's allegiance," said Stephen. 

"No captain worth the skin he wears would shirk from his rightful place on the quarterdeck," Tom interjected. Warmed by the wine and roast beef, he revisited his flash of anger for the French captain. Captain indeed: the man hardly deserved the title. "To hide in the orlop, cowering away from his inevitable capture, is the worst cowardice." 

"I find his pretensions to minister to the injured more appalling, though it seems he was handy enough under the pretext," said the doctor. "Those who died under his care had been hopeless cases. The rest he managed not to kill." 

"He did eventually come to battle," said Will, "and an inspiring battle it was. He was a prodigious foe with superior numbers -- many times more than the Surprises -- and Tom took him. Dished him ferociously, clutched to his very bosom and with his sword tight against the Frenchie's throat."

"Have you a poem to commemorate the occasion, then, Mr. Mowett?" 

"Soon; soon," he replied, red cheeked and satisfied. "I began soon as I stepped aboard the Acheron: what a sight. Not the great clash of ship and ship, of course, but the more I ruminate on it, the longer the poem becomes." 

"The scuffle was hardly worth the effort of such creative -- such grand," began Tom modestly, embarrassed for the attention, but moderated his opinion upon seeing William's face. "That is, a smaller poem would do; it hardly needs an epic." 

"Meeting an enemy face to face in mortal battle is entirely worth immortality in verse," countered Jack. "English verse, of course. God knows the French captain was there as well, but could he be up to the task? Could any Frenchman?"

Stephen recited several lines in French. At Aubrey's incomprehension, he said, "For shame, knowing nothing of the French canon." 

"I daresay I know as much about French cannon as the next English sailor and more," he said, unable to hold a sober expression as mirth rose up around the table, and he repeated louder, "and more, I say, for having faced so many." 

Stephen leaned back and shook his head, arms crossed, exasperated. "For all love, you lead me on repeatedly, and yet I fall, again, having never learned the lesson not to feed you the means to --" and the rest of his complaint was drowned in the roar of laughter. 

*

Stretching their legs on deck, Tom and Will stood a few steps from the others, Will holding coffee while Tom continued with port for medicinal purposes, which served nicely to dull the pain of his fifty nine sutures but fed his melancholy. "One last meal I would not have otherwise had," said Tom, echoing the sentiment expressed at table. 

Picking up on his friend's mood Will said kindly, "We will meet again." 

"In Portsmouth, yes." 

"Where you will get a ship," he continued, happy with this view of the future. 

"And if I don't? Ships don't grow on trees," Tom said. Will opened his mouth, ready to disagree or make a pun, Tom was unsure which and forestalled him. "Not so you could pluck one from its branch, made of wood or not." 

"True, but," Will continued with a glance at the captain's broad back close enough to touch, greatly daring, "there is always a place for you here." 

"I would not have you languishing on the shore, Tom," Aubrey said over his shoulder, ears like a fox and sternly ignoring Will. He turned completely around to face Tom, and his face was kind.

"Thank you, sir; you have always been the best of supporters." Tom bowed as deeply as his side would allow, and Jack Aubrey bowed back. 

The sentiment and bow tapped the last of his resources, and trading a significant look, Tom and Will found a sad privacy in the ward room to sit, to rest: tomorrow they would part. With the squeakers away, hovering on deck waiting for Blakeney to slip them a taste of the good port, there was no Hollum, no Calamy, no Allen: so many crewmates gone. Tom picked idly through a mess of things shoved in a corner of the bench, not needing anything with particular urgency, but searching anyhow. He plucked up a pair of woolen stockings and stuck his finger out a hole in the toe. "I never got around to these." 

Will sat next to him and took it from his hand. "I could have this fixed up for you before we meet again in Portsmouth." 

"That is a kind offer, but you needn't do it to do for me." 

"I do if you want your toes to be warm. You're terrible with a needle if it ain't a sail." 

"Are you writing a poem for me?" 

"Of course." Puzzlement wrinkled his brow. "What better subject? Would you like to hear what I have managed so far?" He stood, stumbling to free himself from his chair with his coat unwilling to detach from the back, a battle he won. He gained his feet and stood straight up, head brushing the ceiling, and as if presenting formally to the captain's table, put his hands behind his back and took a breath to recite. 

Tom did not want to hear this poem and felt himself speak, as if a puppet and not of his volition. "Wait. You must not leave out the Surprise and her role." 

Will looked at him, mouth still open and eyebrows hoisted up into his hair. 

"Have you never seen her from the deck of an enemy? She came at the Acheron like a lion charging over the water. That first shot across the bow raised up our hopes, and it was terrifying to the French. I blush to admit I felt their terror, if vicariously; facing the open gun ports staring you down like, like ..." 

"Demon's eyes? Death's deadly glare?" asked Will as he sank slowly to sitting across the table from Tom. 

"Black, empty eyes." 

Will shifted on the seat. "I cannot imagine they look so different from any other ship, save the paint." 

"It was because I know just how she runs that struck fear into me. Not fear for myself," he corrected, "not exactly, but the fear one feels when faced with a deadly thing, even if it is a tiger in a cage -- and the Surprise has no cage." 

"And that makes her crew what? The claws? The eyes, the brain?" Will smiled. "I think I like the idea of being a great, sharp claw on the paw of a lion of the sea." 

Tom looked at him sidelong. "Do not suggest that particular image to the captain." 

"Heavens, no." 

"Any poetic image aboard the Surprise is best left in your hands. Only you are capable of finding the right words." 

Will bowed, his face wreathed in smiles. "Why thank you, Tom. Most kind; most kind I'm sure." 

"I had not -- that is to say," said Tom, "when have you had the time?" 

"There is no better time than while standing watch," he replied, "same as always." 

"I know it; but laid up as I have been I have not had the opportunity to overhear lately." 

"You eavesdrop on me?" Few things in the world could surprise William; even the captain's order to beat to quarters and chase the Acheron had given him only a second's pause, knowing full well they had gone one from another only hours before, the enemy ship now a prize and commanded by the best commander in the fleet. But now he seemed to have encountered an unwelcome epiphany. 

"It is hardly a private conversation," countered Tom, but Will's face darkened, and he added, "Is it?" 

"In fact it is, if you put it like that: _eavesdropping_. You might as well ascend the trellis outside a lady's window like a thief, to peer in upon her as she dresses for a ball." 

"No need to be a thief when the lady insists on assembling her wardrobe in my carriage." Tom rolled the sock into a ball and tossed it at Will. "On deck you stand near enough to dance as it is. And it's not as if you were unwilling to give your unfinished poem to me directly, just a moment ago." 

"Of my own free will is different; the words tried and discarded are a different matter altogether, and how is it that I became the lady in this farce?" 

"This hypothetical eavesdropping, you mean, and it was you who proposed the analogy, not I. Besides, if you are the woman, than that makes me the peeping Tom." 

Will chuckled. "So it does, and so I did make the analogy," he granted, and lobbed the sock back at Tom, who fumbled catching it and let it roll under the table -- too much effort by far to retrieve it.

"It is strange you chose an image that has nothing of the sea about it." 

Will smiled craftily. "There is no eavesdropping on a ship; anything uttered runs stern to bow and back again with little effort." 

"And yet you take offense at the word. Contrary man," Tom said, smiling. 

"Ah! There is no need for further insults. I have not a contrary bone in my body, and you know it." 

"Except the bone that protests my eavesdropping in a venue in which eavesdropping does not exist." Tom tapped the side of William's head, bringing the amused curl of Will's mouth into a full smile. "I like hearing your unfinished works of poetry. My trip will be poorer for the lack." 

Will's affectionate face expressed complete understanding. "I will miss you, too, Tom." 

* 

 


End file.
